[HN Gopher] $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla st...
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$365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting
Bitcoin
Author : awb
Score : 242 points
Date : 2021-05-13 18:04 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| whitepaint wrote:
| There's no way they didn't know what kind of backlash it'll
| cause. So what the hell ACTUALLY happened? Why are they doing
| this?
| dragoncowman wrote:
| I don't really buy the pump and dump take here. Even if it had
| been an intentional pump, no reason to trigger a selloff.
|
| Some Theses: - Elon is a quick decision maker, he could have
| genuinely been persuaded about energy usage post-hoc. The energy
| bit does run somewhat contrary to Tesla's core mission. - In line
| with this, tesla may be about to form a partnership or make a
| move with another crypto platform, both because the other
| platforms have more technical advantages and because they are
| more energy efficient. Maybe they will even launch their own
| coin/project - Musk decided it was no longer worth the headache.
| His Bitcoin communications may have brought a lot of behind the
| scenes regulatory or fed scrutiny that we are not aware of - Some
| other new information (possibly natsec related) that caused him
| to change his view on BTC
| Aperocky wrote:
| cash would be a good reason.
|
| and the cycle continues, why pump once when you can do it
| again?
| rchaud wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that a guy who talks non stop about
| clean energy does not know how much dirty energy cryptomining
| uses. It is even less likely that he signed off on a $1.5b
| purchase of it, and that no-one involved in that process
| brought up its energy use.
| fastball wrote:
| It is not clear at all how much dirty energy cryptomining
| uses, so...
| drummer wrote:
| Tesla is going to switch to accepting dogecoin that's why.
| [deleted]
| sakopov wrote:
| Very perplexing behavior from Musk, I must say. Bitcoin's energy
| consumption has been front-and-center for a few years now and
| even more so when the bull market got hot. How does Musk decide
| to throw $1.5 billion worth of Tesla's cash into BTC without
| acknowledging this? I was expecting a little bit more due-
| diligence from him, but he's been absolutely consumed by crypto
| markets in general.
| alexnewman wrote:
| People claimed BTC power use was overblown. It turns out it
| wasn't overblown. We now have amazing alternatives which are
| safe and clean. https://medium.com/mobilecoin/mobilecoin-saves-
| on-environmen...
| hinkley wrote:
| I'm going through another vivid round of realizing that my
| parents are humans. They tell you that will happen to you one
| day, they don't tell you it'll happen over and over.
|
| Musk, a human being with more power than any one person can
| handle, makes a decision, then other people and events convince
| him he made a mistake, and he changes back to his old stance.
| That we don't want politicians and public figures to ever
| change their minds says much more about what is wrong with _us_
| than what is wrong with them.
|
| What is pretty weird to me though was that I feel like he could
| have hedged this much better by taking a middle ground. If you
| want to accumulate a position in an asset, and you have a
| ridiculous amount of money, don't you do the Warren Buffet
| method of grabbing it a little at a time, maybe when nobody is
| looking?
|
| If you were trying to build a position in silver, and your
| company accepts it as payment, don't you keep spending your
| other assets and just keep all of the silver that your
| customers pay you with?
| varispeed wrote:
| He is going to blame this on Aspergers. I think this behaviour
| should be illegal if it is not already.
| stagger87 wrote:
| What behavior in particular should be illegal?
| jokoon wrote:
| Because btc helps money launderers and politically it becomes
| delicate.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| My theory is that he realized how many people he ruined with
| the SNL / hustle bit when doge coin dropped and he is trying to
| get out of it. Probably something he should of considered ahead
| of time, the music was always going to stop. The space x
| satellite was his attempt to right it but now he wants to get
| out and focus on his core work. That or his board of directors
| threatened to pitch him if he did not get out.
| notyourwork wrote:
| This looks like a pump and dump scheme in its finest form.
| Nothing changed over last year in regards to energy
| consumption. There's no way that Elon or those in Tesla
| discussing this were not aware of this prior.
| soheil wrote:
| Yes, except Tesla is still holding a massive amount of
| bitcoin. Maybe they want their books to show a loss next
| quarter?
| hinkley wrote:
| Elon is a gambler on a hot streak. He keeps making big bets
| that pay off, but the luck to cunning ratio is dangerously
| high.
|
| Some day the shoe is going to go cold and he's going to be
| fucked. He'll drop off the richest people list faster than he
| climbed it (which was too fast).
| notyourwork wrote:
| > Elon is a gambler on a hot streak. He keeps making big
| bets that pay off, but the luck to cunning ratio is
| dangerously high.
|
| If I could publicly pump and dump something I would also be
| on a hot streak.
|
| Are we forgetting about the secured funding to take Tesla
| private tomfoolery.
| samatman wrote:
| Just from a couple tweets he's made, I infer that Elon
| actually agrees that a lot of his wealth is fake.
|
| Tesla's valuation is insane, it's great evidence that
| markets are just kind of broken right now. We could
| speculate on why, but I decline to do that right now.
|
| It appears to me that he mostly focuses on the fundamentals
| of his companies, including engaging in braggadocio and
| performance art to pump interest and keep people thinking
| about what he's doing. But the point of crap like "full
| self driving", in my opinion, is to sell Teslas. Pumping
| Tesla stock is a nice side effect, right up until it isn't.
|
| My point is that if Tesla can get robustly profitable, but
| the stock declines to some reasonable multiple of actual
| revenue, Elon would count the negative thirty billion
| dollars next to his name on the Forbes list as a win.
| pydry wrote:
| The market is partially broken because of him. He engaged
| in deliberate market manipulation to draw short seller
| blood.
|
| Once it became clear he'd get nothing more than a slap on
| the wrist for that stunt they backed off and the hype
| machine had no counterbalance.
|
| Once the shorts do come back though they will come back
| with a vengeance.
| samatman wrote:
| Like it or not, and I'm undecided, that's principled on
| his part.
|
| He's been pretty clear that he thinks shorting, as it
| works right now, is dirty pool and should be illegal.
|
| I try to stay out of esoteric finance stuff, but it's
| hard the way the world works these days. I kinda think he
| has a point about naked shorts, at least, Gamestonk
| showed everyone an ugly failure mode for that one.
|
| So my take is that the huge Tesla pump was just a side
| effect, this was Elon taking something personally and
| wading in like the 800 pound gorilla he is.
|
| No opinion on whether he should have been punished more,
| or deserved it, I basically don't understand where the
| boundaries on market manipulation or insider trading or
| any of those things are really supposed to be. Just
| moderately confident that he was personally trying to
| rake short sellers over the coals, not so much moon Tesla
| stock to an insane valuation.
| adventured wrote:
| > He'll drop off the richest people list faster than he
| climbed it (which was too fast).
|
| His level of wealth presently is silly and unsustainable,
| however SpaceX can probably sustain him on the richest list
| just fine (takes $20b+ to stay in the top 100, SpaceX can
| give him that by itself). It would have to RUD for him to
| fall off, which appears quite unlikely at present. I'd bet
| against Tesla before I'd bet against SpaceX. There are no
| serious competitors to SpaceX looking out five years,
| whereas Tesla has enormous competition coming at them from
| every angle (not least of which is in China, where they may
| have already extracted what they wanted from Tesla,
| explaining the recent propaganda attack there against Tesla
| and turn south in the narrative in the state controlled
| media). The US Government, NASA and the military all
| desperately need SpaceX to succeed, they're nice allies to
| have so vested in your well-being, they help smooth over
| problems and risks; they've been paving the way for SpaceX
| since early on.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Unfortunately that's not how the current setup works.
|
| The most successful the gambler is, the more of other's
| people they get to gamble.
|
| He's at that point where he could never be right again and
| it'd never personally affect him. I mean if Tesla goes to
| 100 tomorrow morning, who gets hurt more? Elon or
| instructional investors that are supposed to be funding
| things like pensions?
| hinkley wrote:
| He has a track record of using all of his assets to save
| one. It worked before, so he will try it again, until it
| doesn't.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Why would he try it again? At this point what bet would
| require all of his assets like before?
| paulpauper wrote:
| but in a pump and dump scheme the dump is the result of the
| orginal pumpers selling, not from the pumpers wanting to make
| the stock go down. It is in the interests of the pumpers to
| keep the stock price inflated as long as possible.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Pump and deflate? That evil Elon is at it again.
| 988747 wrote:
| Ok, so what if Elon decided that Tesla's current Bitcoin
| holdings are too small, and is looking to depress price to
| buy even more BTC?
| [deleted]
| slg wrote:
| How is this a pump and dump? They never dumped. It is
| certainly stupidity from Musk, but I don't know why you are
| implying maliciousness when they are still holding Bitcoin
| and therefore they are equally hurt by this drop in value.
| ique wrote:
| They sold 10%, so they expect to be in for a few more
| rounds. Pump and dumpers rarely just aim for one single big
| cycle, you go in waves for max profit.
| mnouquet wrote:
| They did - https://fortune.com/2021/04/29/what-we-know-
| about-teslas-bit...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Tesla made $101M in Bitcoin profits in Q1, which was 1/6th
| of their operating profit.
| awb wrote:
| Paper profits? Or did they sell their BTC?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| They sold their BTC.
| matwood wrote:
| > They never dumped.
|
| Not true. They made their numbers by selling 100M or so of
| BTC last quarter.
|
| https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a36266393/tesla-
| mad...
|
| > The second item that helped Tesla were sales of bitcoin,
| the "positive impact" of which amounted to $101 million.
|
| The article says that was 1/10 of what they own. We won't
| know until next quarter how much more they have sold.
| phire wrote:
| Tesla might not have dumped.
|
| But I'd be very interested to see Musk's personal trading
| accounts, and the trading accounts of his close associates.
| novaRom wrote:
| This is why SEC department exists: sec.gov
|
| Musk should be investigated, this is not the first time
| his actions lead to massive market perturbations.
| seunosewa wrote:
| I bet he is already being investigated. It is highly
| unlikely that regulators haven't noticed what he is up
| to.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| They may have bought more...
| slg wrote:
| It is incredibly hard to imagine that the upside in
| Musk's personal Bitcoin stake, whatever it is, is
| anywhere close to approaching his personal stake in
| Tesla. Something like 70% of his net worth is Tesla
| stock. It would be unbelievably stupid to jeopardize the
| value of the Tesla stock to pump up the value of his
| Bitcoin holdings.
|
| Some of these anti-Musk conspiracy theories are truly
| crazy especially considering the man is so out there that
| you don't even need to fabricate weird theories like this
| to make him look bad.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| > Something like 70% of his net worth is Tesla stock.
|
| For now. Spacex is going to be the most valuable company
| on Earth _and_ Mars.
| capableweb wrote:
| > It is incredibly hard to image that the upside in
| Musk's personal Bitcoin stake, whatever it is, is
| anywhere close to approaching his personal stake in
| Tesla. Something like 70% of his net worth is Tesla
| stock. It would be unbelievably stupid to jeopardize the
| value of the Tesla stock to pump up the value of his
| Bitcoin holdings.
|
| I think it's fair to suspect something here though, and
| question Musks behavior these last few years. Yes,
| originally he wanted to save the world with Tesla and
| also find a new world with SpaceX (at least that was the
| outspoken goals), but his current dealings that skirt on
| legality of things, gives another side of him.
|
| Some people who seemed to be driven by the goodness of
| their heart ends up chasing the same money-dragon as many
| before them. It's not impossible.
| slg wrote:
| I am not judging the goodness of his heart or whatever. I
| am simply stating that this theorized plan of him using
| Tesla as a pawn to increase the value of his Bitcoin
| holdings is both an idiotic plan and one that there is no
| evidence of actually existing. The only reason anyone
| would believe it is because they are forsaking critical
| thinking in favor of their bias against Musk that exists
| for both legitimate and illegitimate reasons.
| dTal wrote:
| >seemed to be driven by the goodness of their heart
|
| ...we are talking about Elon Musk, right? The one who got
| rich founding the definitely-ethical, not-at-all-shady
| company PayPal? That Elon Musk?
| phire wrote:
| Sure, his net-worth might be higher if this "tesla
| dabbling with bitcoin" never happened... but he made
| those tweets anyway, and any effects on tesla stock
| happened.
|
| Maybe there was no master plan, but it would be a lot
| better for his personal net-worth if he went long/short
| on bitcoin before each tweet.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| No it wouldn't. The best thing for his net worth is to
| make Tesla valuable, and holding loads of Bitcoin while
| saying Bitcoin's not great is not what you would do if
| that's your motivation.
| tessierashpool wrote:
| _It is incredibly hard to imagine that the upside in Musk
| 's personal Bitcoin stake, whatever it is, is anywhere
| close to approaching his personal stake in Tesla.
| Something like 70% of his net worth is Tesla stock. It
| would be unbelievably stupid to jeopardize the value of
| the Tesla stock to pump up the value of his Bitcoin
| holdings._
|
| this is a good point, but if I held Tesla, I would
| probably prefer cash. it could be that Tesla's greatest
| value is as a prop for BTC scams.
|
| Teslas catch on fire randomly. Their roofs fall off
| sometimes. Their self-driving tech doesn't work as well
| as people expect, and when people get that expectation
| wrong, it sometimes results in them dying. The bulk of
| the company's revenue comes from carbon credits.
|
| maybe he's pumping and dumping Bitcoin because he doesn't
| expect his wealth to last, and if he sold a bunch of
| Tesla stock, people would notice. a little scam to set
| aside a nest egg just in case the other scam doesn't pan
| out.
|
| the weaknesses in this argument are SpaceX and PayPal, so
| I'm not totally convinced of my own position here, but I
| haven't seen any good counterarguments otherwise.
|
| he could also just find scams fun for their own sake.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > Something like 70% of his net worth is Tesla stock.
|
| That's why they're not actual net worth. They are not
| liquid and will almost never be.
|
| Private pump and dump schemes generate real cash, that
| can be used.
|
| Musk can never leverage his Tesla stocks to do anything
| useful near the theoretical amount he has. better get
| some real cash that can buy actual yachts.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| But did he jeapordize the value of his Tesla stock? At
| all? The price of Tesla stock is entirely disconnected
| from the worth of the company, and seems to be doing just
| fine.
| loulouxiv wrote:
| Remember this guy tweeted "funds secured to make Tesla
| private at 420$ per share" to take revenge on Tesla
| shorters blaming him for smoking marijuana on TV
| slg wrote:
| You are equating a stupid in the heat of the moment Tweet
| by one person to a premeditated months long conspiracy by
| multiple people in Tesla's leadership. The two aren't
| equivalent.
| smabie wrote:
| Why would Musk fuck around with a personal trading
| account? He probably owns some coins personally, but it
| would be an insignificant fraction of his networth (which
| is tied to Tesla).
|
| There's no conspiracy here.
| dheera wrote:
| Why does it matter? Manipulation is de facto legal in
| crypto, because no legal jurisdiction has absolute
| control of it, and people getting involved need to factor
| that in as a rule of the game and optimize their own
| strategies taking that into account.
| snotrockets wrote:
| They did dump at least 10%:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-26/tesla-
| bea...
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| Or better yet, did they move into Dogecoin, which
| apparently uses a lot less energy. Setting up the
| inevitable 'use Doge instead, it's better for the
| environment'
| snotrockets wrote:
| Doesn't matter: considering that all cryptocurrencies
| have significant environmental impact, using them would
| force ESG-screening funds to drop the company.
| svachalek wrote:
| Bitcoin is deliberately inefficient to a horrifying
| degree but it is not "all cryptocurrencies". Most modern
| designs are thousands or millions of times more
| efficient.
| mavhc wrote:
| And thus worth 1000s to 100000s of times less money.
| Bitcoin is about turning electricity into bits, the trick
| is the decreasing amount of bitcoin, thus get in at the
| base of the pyramid to make more money
| snotrockets wrote:
| And even at that cost, they are are still an
| environmental disaster.
| rawtxapp wrote:
| Yep, there were some big movements on the blockchain and
| the exchanges prior to the public tweet.
| selectodude wrote:
| Last information we have is from late April saying that
| TSLA sold off 10 percent of their bitcoin holdings. Nobody
| has any idea what their holdings are today.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I thought the point of Bitcoin was that the transactions
| were visible to any that cared to look.
| a9h74j wrote:
| As a general question, how long until we see the first US
| company receive bailout money after losing money on
| cryptos?
| mavhc wrote:
| Can't you just look at the blockchain?
| throwkeep wrote:
| A pump and dump is approximately the least likely
| explanation.
| pumaontheprowl wrote:
| How are you downvoted for this? Tesla directly lost over
| $100M as a result of this decision. If this was a pump-and-
| dumb, they did a horrible job of it. Also, a pump-and-dump
| scheme doesn't require you to crash the price of an asset
| after you exit your position. Suggesting this was a pump-
| and-dump is flat-out idiocy.
|
| More likely is that Musk liked the idea of Bitcoin, but got
| a lot of pressure from environmental activists after
| committing to it and decided it wasn't worth it anymore.
| Companies change their positions based on the outcry of
| political activists all the time. That's far more
| believable than saying Musk tanked his own company in
| effort to execute the worst pump-and-dump of all time.
| bttrfl wrote:
| why is it downvoted?
| pkulak wrote:
| Cus he's not that bright. Isn't this the elephant in the room
| that no one wants to consider? Why do we have to start with the
| assumption that Musk is a genius, then work back from that?
|
| The dude thought covid would go away last May.
|
| He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep
| the Earth habitable.
|
| He's thought that full self driving was 6 months away for
| literally 4 years now.
|
| And he didn't really understand what Bitcoin was when he sank
| 1.5 billion into it.
| tom_mellior wrote:
| I'm with you on everything except the Bitcoin bit. I think he
| knew exactly that (a) it's a highly speculative asset, and
| (b) he has enough rabid fans and general publicity to move
| the market in exactly the ways that _he_ benefits from.
| kingo55 wrote:
| That makes it sound like he was doing a cheap pump and
| dump.
|
| Maybe you're right.
| samatman wrote:
| Tesla still has 90% of the Bitcoin they bought.
|
| If his proclamation knocks, say, half the value off
| Bitcoin, and it stays there, that wasn't a very clever
| pump and dump, because they kinda skipped the 'dump'
| part.
| bhouston wrote:
| They only declare their sales after the fact. There is a
| chance that Tesla owns no bitcoin at this time. Probably
| they still do, but...
| de_nied wrote:
| Perhaps it's a chump and pump. Bring down the value to
| buy the dip.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Or he is really good at PR and know that he can raise money
| off of that and delegate the rest. And therefore smart.
| reader_mode wrote:
| I mean you will see people here on this forum argue that
| bitcoin mostly uses up peak energy and unused capacity and
| such bullshit nonsense - it's frankly not that hard to spin a
| narrative that could sound plausable.
|
| But then when you see people firing up coal plants in your
| back yard just to mine BTC (as opposed to China) reality
| suddenly kicks in and it's hard to spin bullshit arround
| that. Regulators are really dropping the ball on crypto -
| corporate entities should not be allowed to fuel this shit.
| kofddfjdfdfdff wrote:
| You see people firing up coal plants in your back yard?
| That's not an experience most people ever have.
| reader_mode wrote:
| Figurative, it's easy to ignore when those power plants
| get started in third world countries, when it's NY it's
| suddenly much harder to ignore the reality.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-
| equity-f...
| kevinbache wrote:
| He's single handedly accelerated the adoption of electric
| cars by 10 years while advancing literal rocket science to
| the point where launches will be done 10x cheaper.
|
| For those of us who measure by outcomes, he's a genius.
| jreese wrote:
| > He's single handedly
|
| Tesla employs almost 80k workers, and SpaceX employs almost
| 10k. Elon might have had the idea, but it's the employees
| that made it possible and a reality.
| m463 wrote:
| I think it's ok for him to change his mind after further
| consideration.
|
| ...and it would give me hope that we might get round steering
| wheels and individual non-touchscreen controls for critical
| driving functions.
| sbarre wrote:
| There's a really big difference between what public figures
| say and what they believe.
|
| When you have the power to influence
| policy/markets/opportunities simply by saying the right or
| wrong thing, that starts to factor into public statements a
| lot more than what you actually believe.
| soheil wrote:
| I think what you want to say is that he doesn't have a
| crystal ball instead of him not being that bright. How can
| anyone predict any of the above before hand? Bitcoin remains
| probably one of the few perplexing behaviors from Musk.
| fastball wrote:
| Most of those things sound like techno-optimism, which isn't
| really the same as being dumb.
|
| COVID could've started to go away in May with HCT / massively
| more aggressive vax.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Most of those things sound like techno-optimism, which
| isn't really the same as being dumb.
|
| What's the distinction between optimism and stupidity if
| you're equally wrong about reality?
|
| > COVID could've started to go away in May with HCT /
| massively more aggressive vax.
|
| You realize we're talking about May 2020, not 2021.
| caeril wrote:
| This is really no different from any other "engineering
| visionary" executive, everywhere.
|
| These types have a solid understanding of what's technically
| possible by the laws of physics, but wholly underestimate the
| feasibility of a complete implementation.
|
| It's an open discussion whether these types are "bad" or
| "good". I tend to believe that hyper-optimists have a role in
| this world that drives progress forward. Teddy's Roosevelt's
| "Man in the arena", if you will.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| > He's thought that full self driving was 6 months away for
| literally 4 years now.
|
| He might be completely aware that it's not plausible while
| still publicly saying otherwise for financial gain.
| jon-wood wrote:
| In which case he's guilty of securities fraud, and is going
| to have a very bad time.
| onion2k wrote:
| SpaceX wins lots of space contracts with the help of Musk's
| "Occupy Mars" marketing.
|
| Tesla sells lots of cars on the promise of self-driving in
| the marketing.
|
| Musk bought BTC, single-handedly pumped the price of BTC, and
| then sold at a huge profit.
|
| I don't think he's a genius but Musk is definitely not
| stupid. He's just not playing the obvious game you think he's
| playing.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Yep, plus one to this. A lot of people are quick to either
| rationalize his behavior as either awesome or stupid, but I
| think Musk is really a misunderstood mogul who's intention
| is to turn a profit, not deliver on his ridiculous
| worldview.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Musk bought BTC, single-handedly pumped the price of BTC,
| and then sold at a huge profit.
|
| Doesn't this have legal ramifications when done in the
| stock market? If it is shady for that market, why is it
| acceptable in other markets? Oh, right, they're not
| regulated.
| belltaco wrote:
| Telling people that you bought a certain stock isn't
| illegal wtf. Have you watched CNBC or Bloomberg? They
| have hedge fund operators come in and praise or criticize
| stocks that they have bought or sold short.
| grumpitron wrote:
| The SEC doesn't consider Bitcoin a security, so it can't
| be securities fraud. Also there usually must be lies (or
| intentional omissions) involved to prosecute these
| things, and I don't think either of those apply here.
| pkulak wrote:
| And denying covid kept workers in his factory, against the
| law.
|
| I think there needs to be some rule in discussion that as
| soon as you start arguing over if someone is dumb or evil,
| you have to stop. It's impossible to figure out which (or
| what mix) it actually is.
| fastball wrote:
| I'm fairly certain it was not in violation of "the law",
| but rather in violation of edicts from unelected
| officials.
| wffurr wrote:
| "The law" gives public health officials authority to
| issue those "edicts". Try taking them to court and see
| how far that gets you. Hint: not very.
| fastball wrote:
| Well, given how nobody was prosecuted, taking it to court
| seems unnecessary, which was my point.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| It makes me so sad that it's impossible to have a polite
| conversation these days without clinical paranoids
| popping in at every juncture to say, "COVID is a hoax!
| Public health officials are frauds! Medicine is
| meaningless!"
| learningwebdev wrote:
| > I think there needs to be some rule in discussion that
| as soon as you start arguing over if someone is dumb or
| evil, you have to stop.
|
| I really like this, and I propose it be called "Kulak's
| Law".
| fao_ wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor is
| basically the same thing
|
| Also the word "kulak" is loaded -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak
| [deleted]
| arez wrote:
| He's a con artist, that's all
| Traster wrote:
| Isn't this just the same thing idiots did for Trump though?
| Look at whatever Trump does, and then find a reason in
| retrospect why actually that was a smart move.
|
| SpaceX wins contracts because they are able to send
| payloads into space, nothing to do with marketing, and
| sending payloads into space isn't even that hard - they
| basically beat out Nasa who weren't allowed to compete and
| Boeing who can't send a plane to 30,000ft without fucking
| it up.
|
| Tesla sells lots of cars because they're electric and Apple
| made battery technology cheap.
|
| BTC has been running up and down far longer than Musk has
| been involved and it'll continue after he's gone.
| tpmx wrote:
| No comment on how smart or stupid Elon is (he is somehow
| _effective_ ), but I'm with you on all of those things except
| "He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to
| keep the Earth habitable":
|
| The concept of having humans on another planetary body makes
| a lot of sense as backup-plan for humanity. The Drake
| equation be damned - in case we're actually alone, we have a
| pretty strong moral requirement to make sure that (human)
| life survives.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| > The concept of having humans on another planetary body
| makes a lot of sense as backup-plan for humanity.
|
| Sorry, but it's like planning your workout routine in a
| burning building.
|
| The climate emergency is building right now, this instant.
| Cosmic threats like asteroids happen on the order of
| millions of years apart.
|
| We need to stabilize the planet, now, in this generation,
| immediately, or we will doom a million species and most of
| humanity.
|
| Once that is done, we can look at problems on the ten
| thousand to ten million year scales that cost quadrillions
| of dollars to solve, like "moving to a second planet".
|
| Let me be blunt - unless we go all out, the collapse will
| happen a hundred years before any Mars colony is self-
| sufficient, and none of them will survive.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| We can do both at the same time and we should.
| dragontamer wrote:
| "Global Warming" is about the Earth going ~2C to 4C out-
| of-whack with our traditional norms over the next century
| or so.
|
| Mars is about being at -60C all the time, or roughly 80C
| away from what humans want. And temperature isn't even
| the worst part: Mars doesn't have enough oxygen for
| Humans to survive. Mars doesn't have enough nitrogen for
| plants to grow (and make oxygen). Mars doesn't have
| enough gravity to keep a dense enough atmosphere for us.
|
| ---------
|
| Look, I recognize the difficulty that Global Warming has
| on the human race. But Global Warming is a far, far, far
| easier problem than trying to have a sustainable, livable
| experience on Mars.
| pkulak wrote:
| Yeah, you're right. I reached a bit on that one.
| anonporridge wrote:
| He's also never said anything of the sort. He regularly
| admits that Mars is going to be an insanely tough place
| to live.
| shiyoon wrote:
| It's not that he's dumb, he's just not as transparent or even
| ethical as people paint him out as.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| I think it is the opposite. He is very transparent - it is
| just people do not want to believe his goals are exactly
| what he says they are.
|
| I have lost count the number of times in the past about
| something I have told people the truth, the 100% truth and
| they tried to skip over what I said because it did not
| match what they wanted to believe.
|
| Worse, afterwards when events prove they were wrong they
| then try to make all sorts of excuses to support their
| original claims.
|
| You can try and pick on Elon's fine details, but look at
| the stuff people said he could not push thru. If this was
| before 2010 the idea of the Tesla cars, Solar Tiles, Power-
| walls, Falcon Rockets, Dragon Capsules, Boring Tunnel and
| Neuralink all seem like fantasy - yet today they all exist.
|
| Instead I see people send lots of time concentrating on
| things like Hyperloop not working out so far while trying
| not to mention the successes.
| ben_w wrote:
| It's only perplexing if you assume he knows all that you know.
|
| Musk appears to be a _fantastically_ competent salesman and
| decent rocket scientist, but we shouldn't expect him to have
| the Midas touch on other fields of competence.
|
| And while Musk ought to employ people to warn him about all the
| issues he now cites as why he changed policy, remember that he
| did start The Boring Company in response to getting stuck in a
| traffic jam, and got in trouble with the SEC for repeatedly
| tweeting stuff that CEOs are not supposed to tweet, and tried
| to name his kid X AE A-12 -- I assume he has sycophants telling
| him his every idea is fantastic no matter what he does, just as
| he has anti-sycophants (sychokrupho? My Greek is terrible)
| yelling as loudly as possible that he's evil for failing to
| spend his money on _their_ pet project.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Technically, the kid name was Grimes' idea.
| swyx wrote:
| he added A-12, which honestly was the least objectionable
| part of the name
| bhay wrote:
| Plot twist: he already knew.
| orblivion wrote:
| Okay, here's my Big Brain, 4D Chess take:
|
| Elon Musk wanted to adopt Bitcoin, but he knew there was this
| big problem with energy consumption. It's bad for his brand,
| and perhaps goes against his own ethics. Could he say "hey, get
| the energy consumption down and I'll go all-in with Tesla"?
| People wouldn't think much of it.
|
| Better option: Buy a huge stake in Bitcoin, announce that he'll
| be accepting bitcoin at Tesla, get people really excited, heat
| up the market, and then pull it out from under them. Now all of
| the big stakeholders in Bitcoin have a clear, almost measurable
| incentive to clean up bitcoin's act. If Bitcoin adopts proof-
| of-stake or whatever needs to happen to bring down energy
| consumption, people will look back and thank Elon Musk for it.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| No 4d chess needed. It feels like this was a simple pump and
| dump.
| postmeta wrote:
| Did they sell their remaining 1 billion in bitcoin? I saw
| they sold 100m a few months ago.
| xur17 wrote:
| Some interesting timing [0].
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-
| business/exclus...
| worik wrote:
| It is not possible to clean up bitcoin.
|
| Even if it moved entirely to renewable energy it would still
| be a massive opportunity cost. There are productive uses that
| energy could be put to. Bitcoin is not productive.
|
| Using gigawatts to process a few transactions a second, when
| existing financial frameworks can process millions of
| transactions a seconds at a fraction of the energy input
| means that bitcoin is always a massive waste.
| soheil wrote:
| The mere technological advance bitcoin has enabled via
| blockchain alone has led to creation of smart contracts and
| an explosion of innovation in the space, no doubt all this
| will inevitably lead to massive productivity gains. Maybe
| bitcoin itself won't be the final answer but something
| inspired by it will be.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| You seem unaware of proof-of-stake and other initiatives
| that should significantly reduce Bitcoin's footprint.
| worik wrote:
| That is not bitcoin
| brazzy wrote:
| ...which are unlikely to ever get implemented because
| adoption of such an "initiative" would have to be decided
| by miners, and that decision would immediately make their
| very expensive ASIC hardware completely worthless.
| nprz wrote:
| There is utility in the bitcoin network that is not found
| in existing financial systems (censorship-resistant,
| seizure-resistant, borderless, and pseudonymous). And If
| you are thinking about the energy consumption of btc on a
| per transaction basis you are misunderstanding that the btc
| network should be thought of as a settlement layer, rather
| than a payment layer.
|
| > Bitcoin is therefore best understood as a high-integrity
| utility-scale settlement network, similar to Fedwire [...]
| No surprise that like other real-time gross settlement
| systems, Bitcoin is a suitable base upon which other
| payments networks can be built. These are numerous, but
| they include off-chain transactions at exchanges, near-
| chain solutions like Lightning, sidechains with new trust
| models like Liquid and Rootstock, and smart contract
| platforms like Blockstack that rely on Bitcoin's
| security.[0]
|
| The myopic focus placed on the bitcoin networks energy
| consumption has always seemed absurd to me. Considering all
| the plastic junk manufactured in China, shipped on giant
| container ships all across the globe, emitting vast amounts
| of carbon, only to be thrown away a year later. To me, this
| alternative monetary systems provides far more utility to
| humanity than some plastic funko pop figurine. But the
| latter slips under the radar and the former attracts huge
| amounts of criticism. It's almost as if there is some
| concerted effort tarnish the public opinion of bitcoin.
|
| [0] https://www.coindesk.com/frustrating-maddening-all-
| consuming...
| worik wrote:
| Golly. All those things (just like payments) are
| available much cheaper other ways.
|
| I am not a cryptographer, but the cryptographers I know
| and trust all agree on that.
| nprz wrote:
| Say you wanted to pseudonymously send funds to a family
| member with a frozen bank account in say, Gaza, by the
| end of the day. What tech would you use to accomplish
| this?
| worik wrote:
| "myopic focus placed on the bitcoin networks energy
| consumption"
|
| It is not myopic to look at, and call out, the elephant
| in the bedroom
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > the btc network should be thought of as a settlement
| layer, rather than a payment layer
|
| This ruins all of the stuff you mention. Or at least
| restricts these nice features to the rich. People don't
| have access to these features if they are only used
| indirectly through the major institutions they work with.
| nprz wrote:
| All of those features remain intact, even with the
| eventual creation of a payment layer. There is nothing to
| prevent someone from transacting directly on the
| blockchain.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Except the high fees due to limited throughput and the
| absolutely gargantuan CO2 emissions, which are the topic
| of this thread.
|
| You can't say it is a settlement layer in one breath and
| then immediately turn around and say that no really
| everybody truly has access.
| nprz wrote:
| Yes, that's how the btc network works, that's what
| censorship-resistant means. You would primarily transact
| on a payment layer, which true, may not have all the
| features of the base layer. But you also have the ability
| to opt-in and transact directly on the blockchain and get
| all those nice features listed above, however the
| transaction fee would be higher and the speed of the
| transaction slower.
| fastball wrote:
| Layer 2 scaling solutions?
| 988747 wrote:
| They are like Yeti: everybody talks about them, but no
| one has actually seen them.
| anonporridge wrote:
| People are using lightning right now. Your ignorance of
| it isn't proof of absence.
| Muromec wrote:
| Existing financial frameworks sit on top of the whole lot
| of trust-providing institutions, that include governments
| and us army. If you would compare energy consumption of all
| that, bitcoin could be cheaper alternative. Maybe.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| Bitcoin sits on top of those very same institutions as
| well. The only thing stopping criminal gangs from
| stealing the keys to your wallet forcibly at gunpoint is
| the justice system. And the blockchain could not exist
| without the massive government subsidized investments in
| network infrastructure.
| Siira wrote:
| The energy consumption is the only security mechanism Bitcoin
| has. It's impossible to drive it down.
|
| PoS would be a completely different fork, and it's not clear
| how secure/censorship-proof it would be.
| rodiger wrote:
| Any protocol change is, by definition, a fork. If everyone
| says the new PoS Bitcoin is the real Bitcoin, then it is
| so.
| kofddfjdfdfdff wrote:
| But what would be incentives to using a PoS Bitcoin fork,
| as opposed to starting over with a fresh altcoin?
| latchkey wrote:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-13/elon-m.
| .. Surely by next week he'll be tweeting,
| like, "we are building a giant battery in the desert to mine
| Bitcoin, Bitcoin is good again, you can use it to pay for
| Teslas," and the price will shoot back up, and I'll once
| again hit the button that auto-generates this column.
| hef19898 wrote:
| There was a time Porsche made more profits than revenue,
| back before the 2008 crash. Mainly due to financial
| shenanigans, primarily with VW. Came crashing down in 2008
| with the failed acquisition of VW, that ended with a merger
| of kinds.
|
| Maybe Tesla ends up in a similar situation, making the
| majority of it profits from Bitcoin. Wouldn't be to bad for
| them short term, it would mud the waters regarding Tesla
| even more so.
| rjbwork wrote:
| Lol. I freaking love Money Stuff. Levine writes so clearly
| and humorously on so many modern finance topics.
| nickik wrote:
| Whenever people start talking about Big Brain 4D Chess I
| think, probably not it.
|
| Elon is pretty busy, before he got into space flight, he new
| very little about it. Some people at the time said as much.
| However 2 years later the same person said he was literally
| an expert on many things and had learned an insane amount.
|
| This seems more like Elon became convinced of the potential
| of crypto currency in general, told Tesla to look into it, if
| it is a viable cash storage and if it is, logically using it
| for payments make sense.
|
| Then they based on their internal team for evaluation of
| environment they saw that their entrance in the market caused
| a massive spike and released if this continues and they
| continue to drive people in that market it would be damaging
| for the mission.
|
| It reasonable that they didn't understand how large the
| increase in power consumption was and how large it would be
| if it continued to be adopted. So rather then continue to
| drive in that direction they pulled the plug.
|
| I know, its not a crazy big brain story, but its actually how
| most flawed process happen.
| orblivion wrote:
| I forgot to consider that he caused the spike in energy
| usage in the first place. I think this makes more sense.
| orblivion wrote:
| Still, the outcome may be about the same. The incentives
| I described are still there and staring them in the face.
| delaaxe wrote:
| It's not that complicated: https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| I feel like the acceptable level of due diligence that
| should have necessary for Tesla to move in the Bitcoin
| direction should have easily accounted for a possibility
| like this.
| zamfi wrote:
| Elon probably read about the retired coal power plant in New
| York state that's being retrofitted and brought back to life
| for the explicit purpose of mining bitcoin [0].
|
| Honestly, this is really frankly terrible. Even though I knew
| that the power consumption of bitcoin miners was high before
| reading this story, this particular concrete example still
| moved me.
|
| One could easily be tempted to think "sure it's power-
| intensive, but this will all move to solar/wind along with the
| rest of the grid"---but it's hard to square that with stories
| about dirty power being spun up explicitly for mining.
|
| [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-
| equity-f...
| lhorie wrote:
| Disclaimer: this is just my speculation
|
| My guess is that he just isn't very savvy about
| cryptocurrencies in terms of implementation mechanics and
| legitimately didn't understand the extent of bitcoin energy
| consumption until the drop in April brought up that correlation
| front and center in the news when the price drop was attributed
| to a disruption in mining due a blackout in China.
|
| It wouldn't be the first time where he jumped into some topic
| outside his immediate area of expertise and proceed to get
| criticized for missing some critical nuances (e.g. the
| ventilator donation thing, the submarine rescue in Thailand
| thing)
| freshair wrote:
| I don't think it has anything to do with energy or the
| environment. I think Elon Musk distancing himself from Bitcoin
| is a consequence of the recent spat of highly publicized
| ransomware attacks using bitcoin. Elon Musk is connected to the
| military-industrial complex; it is plausible the federal
| government has given him forewarning of an impending war on
| crypto currencies, to make sure their asset, the guy who
| launches lots of their satellites, doesn't get caught in the
| crossfire.
|
| This is pure speculation of course.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Yeah, this is more plausible. I think it's multiple factors
| simultaneously including the bad PR from the environmental
| footprint. And it's kind of funny because Musk has never been
| a full throated promoter of cryptocurrency ever. Social media
| is full of people pumping crypto and yet Musk has regularly
| made technically-accurate skeptical comments about bitcoin or
| similar cryptocurrency.
| cpwright wrote:
| I think the Colonial attack has made many people think about
| cryptocurrencies and the potential for more regulation given
| the publicity and impact to society. There is no need for him
| to get any special "tip" to make that determination, or at
| least have it part of the mosaic of information he uses to
| evaluate cryptocurrencies.
| _Microft wrote:
| My take: this was calculated.
|
| Notice an opportunity for easy money and get into Bitcoin under
| the pretense of selling cars for it, then pull out
| "temporarily" citing environmental reasons. They are now in a
| comfortable position to hold onto it for how long they might
| want to, without getting too many questions why a car maker is
| speculating with crypto coins. If they might need cash (or have
| to pretty up the quarterly results) one day, cash out some. In
| the meantime, post doge memes to keep crypto in people's minds.
|
| Profit.
| [deleted]
| tasssko wrote:
| I find it unbelievable that he would use a public company for
| this kind of speculation. It is grossly irresponsible.
| myth_buster wrote:
| Tesla seeks entry into U.S. renewable fuel credit market -
| sources - May 12, 2021 9:33 AM PT
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/exclus...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I suspect it was a brand-saving decision for Tesla. All of the
| press about Bitcoin's carbon footprint resulted in very bad PR
| and I suspect this is a reaction to that.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| I think Musk is not taking cryptocurrencies or life in general
| as seriously as most commenters here. Which is quite alright
| and refreshing, to be honest.
| soheil wrote:
| No I think he is, he just doesn't like to show his hand.
| dubcanada wrote:
| He's not an idiot, the people who praise him as a god and
| follow his every word and beckon are. Musk is extremely smart,
| he knows Bitcoin energy consumption is high and unsustainable.
| And he knows how to manipulate a bunch of people who have no
| idea what they are investing in/how to invest.
|
| What he did (and this is pure speculation) is a basic pump and
| dump (well sort of dump, I guess they still have a bunch?).
| Bought a bunch of Bitcoin, pumped it WAY up, and sold a bunch
| so TSLA hits revenue targets. A win win for Musk, and it's
| perfectly legal (versus the other time he tried and got slapped
| on the wrist by the SEC).
|
| The fact Bitcoin/cryptocurrency drops 365B after someone sends
| out a tweet is another issue.
|
| It's true markets are highly encouraged by global issues (such
| as Trump tweets sending stocks high or low) but the fact that
| Bitcoin went down 15%~ after a single tweet is an issue.
|
| It's way to easy to manipulate it, and that's really bad.
| Glavnokoman wrote:
| looks like like idiots do not like being called as such :)
| fma wrote:
| Also it's possible that even if he doesn't sell bitcoin, he
| can take a short position, i.e. via GBTC which closely
| mirrors the movements of BTC.
| dang wrote:
| Some of the major threads in this saga so far:
|
| _Tesla Makes More Money Trading Bitcoin Than Selling Cars_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27142261 - May 2021 (171
| comments)
|
| _Elon Musk: Bitcoin 's energy usage trend over the past few
| months is insane_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27141493
| - May 2021 (41 comments)
|
| _Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27139348 - May 2021 (256
| comments)
|
| _Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27135776 - May 2021 (344
| comments)
|
| _Money Stuff: Tesla Sold Some Bitcoins_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26971773 - April 2021 (61
| comments)
|
| _Tesla Wants Your Bitcoin Without the Downside_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26612901 - March 2021 (48
| comments)
|
| _Tesla cars can be bought in Bitcoin_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26566056 - March 2021 (89
| comments)
|
| _You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26564340 - March 2021 (10
| comments)
|
| _Tesla has made $1B profit on its Bitcoin investment_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26236072 - Feb 2021 (46
| comments)
|
| _Buying a Tesla car in Bitcoins cancels 4 times the CO2 savings
| for its lifetime_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26164512
| - Feb 2021 (113 comments)
|
| _Elon Musk wants clean power. But Tesla 's carrying Bitcoin's
| dirty baggage_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26090330 -
| Feb 2021 (256 comments)
|
| _Bitcoin powers towards $50K as Tesla takes it mainstream_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26077118 - Feb 2021 (112
| comments)
|
| _Tesla spent $1.5B in clean car credits on Bitcoin_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26070744 - Feb 2021 (156
| comments)
|
| _Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the
| future_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063920 - Feb
| 2021 (1298 comments)
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Jesus.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| This HN library work is so good. Thanks for these types of HN
| trees.
|
| I've been thinking of offering to help your team with some
| tooling work. But if you needed help, you'd probably find it
| somewhere. So I'll just cheer you on here.
|
| (A fella emailed me about Lumen the other day, asking what I
| thought about Scheme's (let ((a 1) (b 2)) ...) syntax. I said
| "If you want to, you can write a macro to implement Scheme. But
| Lumen's design got it right." So, thanks also if your early
| design conversations influenced how Lumen's LET turned out.
| Some days it feels I've written more (let ...) blocks than
| sentences.)
| Rapzid wrote:
| It's possible Musk just wasn't paying close attention to the
| power aspect of it and recently did, or recently had his mind
| changed about it.
|
| If we want to go the conspiracy route though.. Maybe he is buying
| up ETH and this is priming the market for a later announcement
| about how ETH is the green future of crypto currency.
| bknybkny wrote:
| Elon just learned that BTC is bad for the environment? Should
| have googled it before he bought $1.5 billion of it! Honest
| mistake I suppose.
| hinkley wrote:
| I mean, in theory someone who owns a big part of a resource
| distribution system with a high potential waste factor could
| start a side business that makes use of that resource when it's
| about to 'spoil'. Be that a condiment factory or BTC mining
| next to your cubes of lithium.
|
| Building battery backup near solar farms and then burning the
| surplus as BTC mining whenever the batteries get full but it's
| a windy, sunny day would reduce the footprint of BTC a bit. But
| like the rest of the grid, those happy stories are built on a
| bed of lies/coal/natural gas. You can change the ratios all you
| want but at the end of the day those don't shrink the bad parts
| very much, and dilution is not the solution.
|
| Also, the sad fact is that as much as I wish it were different,
| having hardware sitting idle is super expensive, both
| financially and embodied cost. Mining hardware and the
| buildings to store them have a carbon - and water - footprint
| even when they are off.
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| He wants people to buy solar panels and battery power walls.
| High legacy-created energy cost is good for business, no?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Looking at hyper loop his technical chops might not be what
| some people make them to be... So it might have been...
| noxer wrote:
| Daily reminder that the market cap does NOT exist therefore it
| can not be "wiped off". Its imaginary nonsense.
|
| Market cap explained real simple:
| https://coil.com/p/XRPFax/Understanding-the-Crypto-Market-Ca...
| jokoon wrote:
| Funny title, seen how volatile bitcoin is, to express it in
| dollars.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| SEC wouldn't allow this with the stock market, how is this any
| different? His actions were intentional by the way it is obvious
| he is manipulating the market intentionally.
| bob33212 wrote:
| Elon has become so big that anything he does manipulates the
| market.
| advantager wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Matt Levine's "Money Stuff" column on
| Bloomberg - he always has amusing and insightful commentary
| particularly on Elon -
|
| > My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Liam Denning points out that
| "Musk's move may also indicate that Teslas weren't flying off
| the shelves as a result of accepting Bitcoin payment," and in
| fact it's not entirely clear whether Tesla has sold any cars
| for Bitcoins.[2] I hope it hasn't. I hope Musk can make the
| price of Bitcoin go up or down by 10% by announcing that
| Tesla will or will not accept Bitcoins for cars, without ever
| actually accepting any Bitcoins for any cars either way.
| There's something pure about that: The price of Bitcoin
| depends on Elon Musk's attitude toward it, not on the
| existence of any grubby commercial transactions in which
| Bitcoins are exchanged for cars.[3] The source of value for
| Bitcoin is not its use as a currency or economic importance;
| the source of value for Bitcoin -- for everything -- is
| simple proximity to Elon Musk.
| sp332 wrote:
| Someone finally securitized the reality distortion field.
| murgindrag wrote:
| Hey, I accept pieces of paper (and now bits in a
| computer) for my valuable work, and bought a valuable
| home, car, and computer with those papers and bits.
|
| Money works purely on belief. If we all suddenly
| disbelieved in the dollar, the value would be zero.
|
| Curiously, most cycles of hyperinflation come more from
| loss of faith than from money printing. When people lose
| faith in a currency, they sell it off as a value store.
|
| Elon Musk's net worth is $28B. His faith in a
| crypocurrency as a value store counts for a lot.
| 35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote:
| > Money works purely on belief. If we all suddenly
| disbelieved in the dollar, the value would be zero.
|
| Is this true? Yes.
|
| Are you _wildly underselling_ what "disbelieving in the
| dollar" means in practice? Also yes.
|
| I believe in the dollar because the United States has the
| worlds largest nuclear arsenal, spends nearly a trillion
| dollars on its military every year - and that's only what
| it puts on the books - and has been proven to have an
| itchy fucking trigger finger.
|
| That trust isn't going anywhere without _massive_ global
| conflict.
| pinkybanana wrote:
| > Elon Musk's net worth is $28B. His faith in a
| crypocurrency as a value store counts for a lot.
|
| Not only that, but he has pretty dominating role in
| various companies whose market caps are in hundreds of
| billions at least.
| freeopinion wrote:
| For narrow definitions of "market". Has Elon ever caused any
| movement in the U.S. Dollar?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I don't want the SEC involved in crypto, at all.
| mvzvm wrote:
| I do. Right now it feels like a carnival full of carnies.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Folks have forgotten the reasons why the SEC was created in
| the first place, probably because the heyday of
| unregistered securities, etc, was over 100 years ago.
|
| While you could make plenty of argument that the SEC should
| do more, it doesn't make any sense that it should do less.
|
| Lots of folks will lose a lot of money in cryptocurrency
| schemes in the next few years. We desperately need more
| regulation.
| Alupis wrote:
| > I do. Right now it feels like a carnival full of carnies.
|
| With people making fortunes or losing everything based on
| one dude's mood and a single tweet.
|
| The SEC and other's exist because of the Robber-Baron's of
| old... I'm no "Regulation Hawk", but it does seem silly to
| allow this nonsense to continue.
| dboreham wrote:
| Too late.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Why, are hoping to be able to pump and dump like old musky
| someday?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Wherever the Federal Government goes seeking to protect
| citizens a litany of intrusive, bloated, and invasive
| regulations follow.
| totalZero wrote:
| This reads like something you'd overhear at a Sackler
| family cookout.
|
| Surely you can recognize the benefits of government
| regulations in lopsided markets where small participants
| lack either the power or the information needed to keep
| large participants honest.
| sp332 wrote:
| Laws still apply to individual people even if those people
| denominate their illegal actions in BTC instead of USD.
| They're not going after exchanges or miners here.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Market manipulation isn't illegal because it hurts
| investors, it's illegal because it hurts the market which
| is important for the economy. The crypto market isn't, so
| it doesn't need that kind of legal protection.
| totalZero wrote:
| Both points you make are questionable.
|
| Hurting the market is no different from hurting investors
| because bad practices that hurt one investor have a
| chilling effect on other investors' activity. Moreover,
| regulators don't have to clear a "does this hurt the
| whole market" test before taking action. For example, I
| know a guy who was running a business at an investment
| bank and got in trouble with FINRA for trading through
| NBBO on a very small order (retail sized).
|
| The crypto market has grown to a size and role that
| affects the greater economy. We see that in so many ways,
| not only due to the holdings but also because different
| economic participants are catering to miners and setting
| up payment options for holders of crypto. It's no longer
| a cute side project.
| totalZero wrote:
| Why not? There have obviously been several scams in crypto,
| and as a market it is extremely disorderly.
|
| Buying and selling gold is highly regulated. What makes you
| think crypto shouldn't be similarly regulated, even if it's
| only to ensure that taxes get paid and exploitative schemes
| get busted?
| PeterStuer wrote:
| SEC sees crypto as a market dominated by the Chinese. They want
| to dominate it themselves.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I wonder how much BTC is actually mined with fossil fuel. Even at
| the record prices, with efficient ASIC/GPU miners, you need some
| extremely cheap electricity to make it work.
|
| I suppose owning the power plant might work, as in the example
| ars article linked in this thread of a company spinning a
| bankrupt fossil fuel plant up for crypto.
|
| I think you can attribute a lot of other factors to crypto
| volatility than just Musk tweeting, such as:
|
| * Statements this week by SEC that put doubt on crypto currency
| ETFs being approved in US markets.. which blows up one of the
| major bull cases- that crypto would become more main streamed,
| crypto linked products would hit traditional US exchanges and
| brokers.. increasing accessibility / addressable market.
|
| * More US probes in crypto space - this time of Binance
| mondoveneziano wrote:
| You cannot regulate what energy sources are being used for
| mining Bitcoin. If any particular energy source is available at
| the right cost somewhere, be it in a remote location with a
| defunct government, miners will use it.
| matchagaucho wrote:
| 75% of BTC mined in China. 53% of China's power is coal.
|
| Some fossil-fuel plants in the US are reopening specifically to
| serve BTC data centers.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...
| bob33212 wrote:
| How long until other companies take it off their balance sheets?
| It is amazing how many smart people got sucked into the BTC
| nonsense. It has always been a libertarian dream currency that
| was never going to be useful in the real world, other than for
| buying drugs online.
| marsrover wrote:
| Nothing makes me happier than to see someone act so
| condescending about "buying drugs online" while at the same
| time being so out of touch with reality.
|
| Well, nothing other than the fact that I'm a millionaire today
| because I decided to buy drugs online in 2013.
| 1996 wrote:
| Personal congrats on your life decisions, even if that may
| not fly here :)
|
| Like the pencil said when you sharpened it:
| Never say yes to drugs! ever say yes to drugs!
| say yes to drugs! yes to drugs!
| to drugs! drugs!
|
| More people should have listened to the pencil! (see also:
| "I, pencil" by Leonard E. Read)
| marsrover wrote:
| Thank you very much. Congrats on your personal life
| decisions as well.
|
| The fact that these types of decisions don't fly here makes
| it all the more fun to rub it in their faces :)
| 1996 wrote:
| > Thank you very much. Congrats on your personal life
| decisions as well.
|
| No thank to HN FUD that delayed my entry! If I had only
| trusted my gut instead of the common "wisdom", I could
| have been a billionaire instead.
|
| It may still be possible based on private BTC projection,
| but that will be in 20 years...
|
| > The fact that these types of decisions don't fly here
| makes it all the more fun to rub it in their faces :)
|
| Indeed! I already loved you, now I'll be sure to check
| for your comments :)
| uncomputation wrote:
| ...Congratulations? You didn't actually address his concerns
| (although they were troll-y in nature). You just flexed about
| your own wealth, which just as easily could've come from
| betting on the right stock in 2013. I don't understand crypto
| advocates whose only plus-one for crypto is that it made them
| personally rich. It just as easily could've gone nowhere and
| just because the market happens to be in your favor for now
| does not validate crypto as a whole in my eyes. What is its
| genuine value at the moment?
| marsrover wrote:
| Ah, how little I care about any of this these days.
| bob33212 wrote:
| Sounds like the drugs are working.
| marsrover wrote:
| I feel like your personality is probably so unoriginal
| that I could draw a caricature of you without ever seeing
| your picture.
| bob33212 wrote:
| A painter and a drug user? Who would have guessed?
| marsrover wrote:
| Doesn't take a painter to draw a stick figure.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| You got lucky. That doesn't make you smart or
| cryptocurrency smart for anything that has happened. It
| would be silly for someone to smugly talk about how smart
| they are for winning the lottery.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Everyone's a genius in a bull market.
| wmoxam wrote:
| > never going to be useful in the real world, other than for
| buying drugs online
|
| I've heard it's great for ransomware too
| paulpauper wrote:
| MSTR down 10% to $500 (60% off the highs) depsite btc only being
| down 24% from highs. Put options on MSTR plus being long BTC
| seems like a good micro-strategy. MSTR is overleverged and at
| risk of defualt if btc falls below $10k.
|
| https://greyenlightenment.com/2021/03/16/microstrategys-bad-...
|
| MSTR will probably need to sell more debt to cover existing debt
| and at very unfavorable terms.
| [deleted]
| arbuge wrote:
| I personally feel that Musk's strategy is that any publicity for
| his companies is good publicity, so he puts himself out there
| trying to connect popular themes like cryptocurrency to them in
| any way possible. Other practitioners of this strategy that come
| to mind are Richard Branson in business and Donald Trump in
| politics. Their number one priority above all is to dominate the
| news cycle, which equates to free marketing.
|
| Given the above, I highly doubt that this (or the original
| adoption of Bitcoin earlier this year) is due to any deep
| feelings he may have about the merits or otherwise of Bitcoin
| itself. I also predict that he'll soon reverse himself publicly
| all over again.
| hd4 wrote:
| The media tends to be extremely trigger-happy to blame a
| correction or dip in crypto on a single event like Tesla not
| accepting BTC while it's just as likely that this is an effect of
| the wider market correction that's taking place after the
| inflation/CPI news this week.
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| HN posters tend to be extremely trigger-happy to attack the
| media, without doing any diligence on timing.
|
| Unfortunately, these overly confident posters never learn,
| never stop spewing bullshit, and never become worthwhile
| contributors to society.
| danhak wrote:
| There was a massive spike downward literally the minute Musk
| sent the tweet.
|
| When the price is stable for hours then collapses after an
| event, you can pretty safely infer the correlation.
| uncomputation wrote:
| If the market of crypto was less of a bull run, I'd be inclined
| to agree, but a lot of the people in it right now are driven
| entirely by pumpers/peddlers (Anthony Pompliano, Michael
| Saylor, David Gokhshtein, etc.), Elon Musk tweets, and
| speculation/wanting to strike it rich. I think when the market
| is this speculative, it's fair to blame a downturn on one event
| (with a pretty close timestamped correlation - you can see BTC
| tumble after Elon's tweet and DOGE after he called it a
| "hustle" on SNL).
| acchow wrote:
| Tesla's announcement was about the environmental impact of
| bitcoin. Proof of work coins are down precipitously whereas the
| main proof of stake coin (Cardano) is up significantly. The
| timing with the announcement is more than just "macroeconomic
| effects".
| kvz wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if they bought Cardano's ADA ahead of
| this. It's the biggest crypto that already implemented proof
| of stake, so the most likely place anyone seeking refuge may
| move value to, increasing its price dramatically. This could
| make it a dump & pump, if that makes sense. Dump BTC with a
| claim that pumps ADA.
| dragontamer wrote:
| If the dollar is inflating away, you'd want to sell dollars and
| buy BTC and otherwise run away from the dollar.
|
| The inflation argument makes no sense. Inflation would cause
| BTC to go up in value. Something else is causing BTC to drop in
| value.
|
| Personally, I think this has more to do with Vitalik's $Billion
| donation to charity. What do you think would happen when a
| whale decides to sell $1-Billion worth of various cryptocoins?
| I bet they're liquidating all of those various cryptocoins into
| BTC, and then using the large BTC-exchanges to convert it into
| fiat.
|
| All this Tesla stuff seems like a red-herring to me.
| gradys wrote:
| You'd think an intrinsically deflationary asset like Bitcoin
| would move differently in the face of USD inflation. Any
| explanation for why this might be?
| lvs wrote:
| Because it's backed by the full faith and credit of absolute
| void.
| dboreham wrote:
| /dev/null
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Are you talking about the Dollar?
| selectodude wrote:
| Gotta hold dollars to pay US taxes. Don't need to hold
| Bitcoin to do anything at all.
| rjknight wrote:
| Inflation figures are a leading indicator of US monetary
| policy. All other things being equal, higher inflation
| readings now means _relatively_ tighter US monetary policy
| later on.
|
| Yes, the Fed has committed to allowing some >2% inflation to
| make up for past <2% inflation, but it's still the case that
| policy might tighten one day, and higher inflation now still
| brings that day closer than it would have been with lower
| inflation.
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| Maybe people are selling it to buy cheap stocks.
| mateuszf wrote:
| > You'd think an intrinsically deflationary asset like
| Bitcoin would move differently in the face of USD inflation.
| Any explanation for why this might be?
|
| I guess because right now a big percentage of bitcoin price
| comes from speculation and not from people realizing its
| deflationary potential. Which probably will change in future.
| paulpauper wrote:
| bitcoin, like gold, is only an effective hedge against a
| currency that is falling relative to the US dollar. If you
| have dollar-denominated assets , such as stocks, there is no
| need for Bitcoin to hedge inflation.
| whitepaint wrote:
| That is just a ridiculous statement. If you want a hedge
| against inflation you'd buy something like shares of
| McDonald's (people will keep eating burgers), gold and other
| commodities, things that people need.
|
| No one actually needs Bitcoin. If Bitcoin disappeared right
| now, who would lose besides the people who hold Bitcoin? No
| one. If you want to circumvent the banks there are other ways
| to do so and very easily so.
|
| It's the biggest speculative bubbles of all time. And at the
| same time I believe it's a very important innovation by the
| way (solving the double-spending problem, or more precisely,
| making it good enough).
| gradys wrote:
| What is ridiculous exactly? That it's deflationary? Or the
| intuition that it should rise in the face of USD inflation
| (all else equal)?
| whitepaint wrote:
| That it should rise because of USD inflation.
| chanc3e wrote:
| Well put. The fundamentals are: pretty much everything in
| this world has a known fiat currency value.
|
| The difference with BitCoin is that you can't go to a
| farmer and buy his goods, or pick up a used car, go to an
| auction, or take a wedge of greenbacks and disappear.
|
| Until that becomes a ready reality, BitCoin is separate
| from actual trade, and completely vulnerable to
| speculation.
|
| Currencies are a shared dream, stop believing and they
| Tinkerbell. That said, a BitCoin does have a definitive
| value, and won't go away. But it's certainly not $50k.
| anxrn wrote:
| Why do people need gold?
| whitepaint wrote:
| https://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of-gold.shtml
|
| And now, please reciprocate, why do people need Bitcoin?
| If Bitcoin disappeared right now, what would anyone
| (besides people who are holding it) be losing?
| Siira wrote:
| Those uses can not sustain its price.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| This was from Musk's announcement as can be plainly seen from
|
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%201-d&geo=...
|
| and https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin
|
| At 3pm PT on 5/12, Bitcoin was at $54.6k USD. Musk tweeted
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392602041025843203 at
| 3:06pm. Two hours later, BTC was at $47.7k. One cannot blame
| the media on this, and it's not the result of macroeconomic
| news.
| paulpauper wrote:
| yes the cause and effect doesnot get any more obvious than
| that
| lhorie wrote:
| DOGE's drop over the weekend also more or less coincided w/
| Musk's appearance on SNL (where he called it a "hustle"). If
| you recall, the previous rise in BTC also followed closely on
| the tails of the news that Tesla was getting into BTC.
|
| Kinda insane that a single guy can make almost the entirety
| of the crypto market swing 10-20% every time they mention
| crypto.
| rchaud wrote:
| That's what happens when the blind are leading the blind.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| How does this even work? Do people hear him saying
| "Dogecoin is a hustle" and immediately start selling their
| dogecoins? Where do they get buyers on-demand?
| lhorie wrote:
| Sort of. Among DOGE speculators, people were saying that
| the coin might start to be seen as more "serious" (read:
| track BTC swings more closely) if it reached $1. It was
| trading at around $0.70. Then Musk came out on national
| TV and pretty much took a hard "lol DOGE is just a meme"
| position.
|
| A lot of people were already astronomically up on their
| DOGE holdings; having its biggest advocate in recent
| memory (recall Musk crowned himself "Dogefather")
| basically dismiss any hint that it might be a "serious"
| coin amounted to a signal that $0.70 was peak DOGE
| (IMHO).
|
| Given that this latest quip from Musk is explained as
| being related to concerns about BTC's power consumption
| problems, I wouldn't be surprised to see him in the near
| future pumping another altcoin that advertises as having
| a power efficient network like NANO.
| [deleted]
| colechristensen wrote:
| It's almost like crypto has very little actual value
| outside of speculation...
| kordlessagain wrote:
| There is yet a killer use case, but AI is coming so just
| hang on a hot minute. Well be above 100k in six months.
| Machine learning APIs and Lighting payments are a match
| made in heaven.
| chanc3e wrote:
| I'll bite. What do you mean?
|
| Any Mathcoin (or any trade) is an exchange based on
| energy spent (not including Mathcoins insane transaction
| cost). It's an abstraction from someone mining for
| materiel from the ground and trading. An energy cost is
| involved.
|
| What's the killer use case? I can just as easily purchase
| wine, art, or goods which appreciate and will
| indefinitely hold a non zero value, even if civilisation
| comes to a halt, someone wealthier than me will want to
| get drunk.
|
| If the use case is a fungible, I'm good. If I want to do
| illegal stuff, I can just as easily launder those goods
| the same way.
|
| p.s. if you buy expensive wine in restaurants, thanks.
| paxys wrote:
| You just strung together some meaningless words.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| I hope its satire
| aaronharder wrote:
| ...and so, teaching us rubes that lesson was Elon's
| intended 3D chess move all along?
| the_local_host wrote:
| I think Musk just thought it would be funny to accept
| BTC, and didn't give any thought to the environmental
| concerns around BTC.
|
| Eventually he either realized or had it pointed out that
| the environmental controversy would be problematic for an
| electric vehicle company.
| agency wrote:
| It literally started dropping the minute the tweet came out...
| bhay wrote:
| Indeed it did. I saw the tweet within a minute of it being
| posted and watched the crash happen live on TradingView.
| kevinbache wrote:
| He has 1) Shown us what his word is worth to the speculative
| market club 2) Brought about two news cycles in which Americans
| will be taught about cryptocurrency 3) Made the right long-term
| move for the environment. If crypto is indeed the currency of the
| future then there's absolutely no reason for us to all pile on to
| any version of it that requires us to pollute.
|
| Sound familiar?
|
| Welcome to the wide world of symbolic lessons. If this blows your
| mind, wait 'til you take a long look at Republicans.
| noxer wrote:
| How long until he figures out that DOGE also wastes energy?
| paulpauper wrote:
| or that electric cars do not actually have zero carbon
| footprint
|
| while we're at it, don't rockets pollute too
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Nobody thinks that EVs have a zero carbon footprint.
|
| But over the lifetime of the car, they have a lower footprint
| than ICE. Yes, they have a higher footprint than ICE to
| manufacture, but even if you get your power from coal, over
| the long term their carbon footprint is lower. And if your
| power comes from a renewable source, then the break-even
| point is less than two years.
|
| Engineering Explained did a good video doing the math behind
| the carbon footprints of ICE versus EV over the life of the
| car:
|
| https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM
| noxer wrote:
| No one suggest they have. As long as they have less than an
| device that does the same task but uses gas then it reduces
| emissions.
|
| Rockets as well, they pollute but making them reusable
| pollutes less. Also depending on fuel type its perfectly
| possible to produce it form solar energy.
|
| But DOGE just burns energy it does nothing with it that could
| not be done without. Its significantly less then Buttcoin but
| it explodes with popularity as well. And every energy wasted
| is too much in the end.
| totalZero wrote:
| Making rockets reusable uses more fuel but requires more
| raw materials to be mined, refined, and fabricated into
| parts. It's a tradeoff. The chief argument for reuse is
| cost, not emissions.
| noxer wrote:
| "More fuel" is irrelevant its about pollution. You can
| never make parts without using a fix amount of resources
| and energy and if they are used they will end up as waste
| which is pollution too. Fuel however is just energy in a
| specific form. If the fuel is created with electric
| energy and it all comes form coal then it pollution is
| high but there is a clear path to reduce it down the
| line. There is no such path with rockets parts that have
| to be fabricated again and again and again.
|
| Cost is the reason why it is feasible. But it still
| reduces pollution. The additional fuel used to land the
| rocket causes way way less pollution than creating a new
| one for every launch. Embodied energy (gray energy) is
| often significantly underestimated. Just transporting the
| raw material from all around the world to make a final
| product uses immense amour of energy and very often its
| in the form of oil. Also down the line the additional
| fuel to land can be created with low pollution energy so
| pollution is reduced even further.
| totalZero wrote:
| Yes, rockets pollute, and different rockets pollute
| differently. This is my favorite primer on the topic:
|
| https://everydayastronaut.com/rocket-pollution/
| mondoveneziano wrote:
| Electric cars and rockets only profit from becoming more
| efficient. Almost everything does, actually.
|
| Proof-of-work cryptocurrency does not. In fact, it
| counteracts efficiency, by design. If a new ASIC makes mining
| Bitcoins more efficient, difficulty is adjusted up.
| liquidise wrote:
| My hot-take having watched the culling from an invested position
| follows. Disclaimer: i hold both BTC and ETH.
|
| While the market in general is down, the major losses in this
| crash were Bitcoin, Doge and Shiba. Bitcoin is an obvious result
| given the news. Doge and Shiba have had pretty spectacular gains
| over the last ~30d and seeing them lose considerable value is
| unsurprising if you follow crypto markets much. Seemingly new
| money has been racing in lately (see big rises in Eth Classic and
| Bitcoin Cash as well), i find these dips also unsurprising given
| past behavior.
|
| As a somewhat meta analysis, i feel BTC could have an interesting
| summer. BTC plateaued at $1.1T in market cap. Meanwhile, Ethereum
| has been on a steady rise from 250-500B+. Talk of "the
| flippening" has returned in a way i didn't anticipate, certainly
| not this early on.
|
| While this news impacted the whole market (the market still
| follows big BTC swings to some extent), i have found my personal
| sentiment shifting to be increasingly bearish on BTC and bullish
| on ETH.
| bknybkny wrote:
| I thought SHIB was dead because Vitalik gave it the rugpull?
| tomca32 wrote:
| it's still roughly 3-4x higher than what it was just a week
| ago
| captn3m0 wrote:
| The charity he donated to is going to liquidate it over time
| to protect the community. It's ridiculous.
|
| https://twitter.com/CryptoRelief_/status/1392559057764962304
| paulpauper wrote:
| this is why in finance the most obvious or intuitive
| prediction or outcome is often the wrong one. "omg..he sold
| his stock/crypto/token etc., therefore it must fall a lot!"
|
| He should have just sold thee shib, convert to $, and cut
| the check. Too much of charity these days feels like moving
| assets around and money instead of donating. That is why
| the UBI is so popular, because it gives the money to the
| people instead of middlemen, bureaucrats, admins, and money
| changers.
| baq wrote:
| Taxes!
| lmedinas wrote:
| > While the market in general is down, the major losses in this
| crash were Bitcoin, Doge and Shiba. Bitcoin is an obvious
| result given the news. Doge and Shiba have had pretty
| spectacular gains over the last ~30d and seeing them lose
| considerable value is unsurprising if you follow crypto markets
| much.
|
| the interesting thing is that all those 3 coin crashes were
| again due to Elon Musk. He has been spreading the FUD all this
| time. I wonder how influencing markets is legal.
| hilbertseries wrote:
| Pump and dump schemes are illegal for the stock market. These
| regulations don't apply to cryptocurrencies.
| tootie wrote:
| AFAIK none of these currencies have anything resembling
| fundamentals. Is predicting swings done by watching chatter on
| reddit?
| xur17 wrote:
| This is mostly true, but a number of tokens actually do
| generate an income in the form of fees, inflation rewards, or
| a combination of the 2. For example, ETH can earn staking
| rewards, and post ETH2 merge, will also earn transaction fee
| revenue. A number of the dexes generate trading fees that get
| distributed to token holders (giving P/E ratios that are
| high, but not absolute insanity given they are "growth"
| stocks).
| purple_ferret wrote:
| The top never feels like the top for people buying in. That
| applies to both Bitcoin and Ethereum.
| sickygnar wrote:
| I'm the oppsite, and I'm not a btc maximalist. I'm not going to
| make any predicitons about the price direction of either coin,
| I'm mainly surprised by eth's huge rise. there's some risk with
| the eth2 / PoS migration, though it comes with a huge benefit.
| would someone mind explaining the technical risk? i'm not that
| well versed in it, maybe i'm overstating it (the market is
| obviously bullish about it). without it, smart contracts are
| borderline unusable.
|
| eth also has a big target on its back, a lot of the top coins
| are going after the smart contract space, mainly the
| centralized bootleg garbage called binance chain, which
| unfortunately does fill a market need, at least to less
| discerning "investors." to my detriment, i haven't touched it.
|
| in contrast to eth, i'm not surprised about btc's rise. it does
| one thing and it does it well. it seems to work well as a hedge
| against inflation. i don't think that many people care about
| the environmental impact. it's not immediately visible, at
| least not like cars and other polluters. it's out of sight and
| out of mind.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| The proof of stake ETH2 chain is already live for Ethereum
| and has been since December. That chain is parallel to the
| existing proof of work chain. They now need to merge the POW
| chain into the ETH2 validator nodes so they can conduct
| consensus from there on. The merge has been simulated already
| and is being tested. Core devs seem to be confident it will
| be feasible with low risk. But of course, there's always a
| chance something goes wrong.
|
| For more info check out this beautiful site:
| https://ethmerge.com/
| rawtxapp wrote:
| It's one thing for it to be live, it's another thing for it
| to be stress tested in actual production/real world with
| people's actual money.
|
| I have a vested interest in hoping it lands successfully,
| but being a software engineer, I know how many bugs I've
| had even in simple programs, I can only imagine the kinds
| of bugs that will be discovered in eth2 considering just
| how complex it is.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| As someone else said, it's in production. Also, there are
| many, many forks of the EVM in production that run on
| proof of stake mechanics (Polygon, Binance Smart Chain,
| Skale, Qtum, xDai, etc). The main thing you have to worry
| about with move to ETH2 is contentious forks of the main
| chain, like if POW miners revolt and start a fork or a
| blip at the merge point that takes the chain offline for
| a bit. The ongoing ETH2 consensus and validation mechanic
| is live already. ETH2 also has client diversity, with 4
| different implementations written in four different
| programming languages (Rust, Go, etc). There is some
| world class talent on the ETH core team. I have full
| faith in them and their testing regiment. But of course
| there is no such thing as risk-free.
| xur17 wrote:
| The proof of stake chain is running in production with
| $16B staked in it.
| HeadsUpHigh wrote:
| It's fascinating watching the narratives unfold and affecting
| the price. Bitcoin is the bad guy today, until bitcoin holders
| just buy up the new liquidity and it starts going up again.
| Then the narrative will change again.
| paulpauper wrote:
| The crypto market is so big now that it's hard to imagine
| enough new money to make prices go up anymore. How does anyone
| justify these obscure tokens and coins being worth billions.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The tether printer can print as much as they want.
| rawtxapp wrote:
| It's called leverage, unfortunately too many exchanges offer
| way too high leverage to people who might not fully
| understand what they are doing.
| hi5eyes wrote:
| nearly 10B in longs were liquidated on April 17th,
| exchanges give everyone way too much leverage with the tap
| of a couple screens
| samsonradu wrote:
| Right:
| https://www.binance.com/en/support/articles/360033162192
| frockington1 wrote:
| US YoY inflation was 4.2% last month with another $6 trillion
| in proposed spending. Alternatives to bitcoin are looking
| weak as well
| HeadsUpHigh wrote:
| Retailer frenzy on top of a new technology alien enough that
| people don't understand it. If you think these coins are all
| there is, just wait until you see the thousands of meme coins
| that never took off.
|
| Also keep in mind that these coins crash with very small
| amounts of money. The liquidity just isn't there.
| freshair wrote:
| > _How does anyone justify these obscure tokens and coins
| being worth billions._
|
| The Greater Fool Theory. This stops working when you run out
| of fools, but the notion of _" there's another sucker born
| every minute"_ probably keeps the ball rolling for a while.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| Sure, but I thought there could be no more greater fools in
| 2013, and again in 2017.
|
| It is shocking how many fools exist.
| Slartie wrote:
| Actually as to my observation it's the same fools again
| every time, plus some new fools, with ever-deeper
| pockets.
|
| This streak will break not when the maximum number of
| fools has been reached, but when the fools with the
| biggest wallets have gotten involved.
| kirse wrote:
| In 2017/18 the "smart" money was early into ICOs and the
| "fools" are just getting into those over the past year.
| Meanwhile the "smart" money has moved on to DeFi and all
| that nonsense - DeX, yield farming (ponzi scheming),
| flash loans, etc. The next cycle you'll see smart money
| move onto something else, and they'll have figured out
| how to repackage DeFi to the average fool, which will
| come with greater linkages to the inherent financial
| systems.
|
| What made the GFC such a massive bubble was how much the
| financial system was woven into Mortgages/CDOs. Crypto is
| not there yet, right now it could pop and you'd hear a
| few regretful stories and friends who lost a few hundred
| on the "Doge", but it wouldn't be a widespread disaster.
| Once you start seeing apps utilizing DeFi to enable
| average "fools" to purchase equities, fund
| home/auto/college loans etc that will signal a bubble
| with vicious potential.
|
| Dogecoin purchases via Robinhood is probably the easiest
| we have right now to getting the average fool to trade
| their currency for memes, but that's still a small subset
| of gambling.
| osenthuortuh wrote:
| From the charts I'm looking at (market watch), it appears that
| other cryptos have lost more than bitcoin, by percentage. Am I
| incorrect?
| nwsm wrote:
| If you're referring to their comment "the major losses in
| this crash were Bitcoin, Doge and Shiba", they are most
| likely picking that list by market cap (though I did not try
| to crosscheck).
| liquidise wrote:
| Quite right. The alt-coin market is notoriously volatile even
| by crypto market standards, and not something i follow close
| enough to give a strong analysis on.
|
| Coinbase's weekly losses chart[0] captures some of what i
| hoped to express in my parent comment. Bitcoin is interesting
| because in a way, it hasn't so much lost value lately as not
| risen with the market the last couple of weeks.
|
| 0: https://www.coinbase.com/price/s/top-
| losers?resolution=week
| SilasX wrote:
| Yes, others have, but interestingly, Cardano (ADA) held up
| well. Even though it dipped, it's still up 20% over the past
| week and is #4 by market cap.
| HeadsUpHigh wrote:
| Just keep in mind that those who move to the coins that
| pump during a dump tend to put stop losses. So these coins
| end up dumping harder later on.
| acchow wrote:
| I think people are switching to Cardano because it has
| lower environmental impact (proof of stake) than others.
| The Tesla announcement was about the environmental cost
| of Bitcoin after all.
| Slartie wrote:
| I'd say this observation might be correct, on the basis
| that the Tesla announcement also sent the lesser-known
| NANO currency up by about 60-80%, which uses PoS as well.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| So many comments in this thread suggest Musk is an all knowing
| individual. "How could he miss this?" "I can't believe someone so
| wealthy can miss something so important!" And so on.
|
| This is a really sad view, IMHO. Wealth may provide more
| opportunities to learn and expand, but that doesn't mean the
| wealthy know everything. He _should_ have done his research,
| maybe he did and decided to go that route anyway, but wealth is
| only correlated to knowledge, not causative.
|
| Edit to add: No defense for Musk here, I just hate seeing wealth
| equated to smarts.
| i_have_an_idea wrote:
| He may not be all-knowing, but my retired, former customer
| service employee grandmother knows Bitcoin is produced with
| dirty energy in China. It's not exactly secret knowledge.
|
| So, it's obviously a pump and dump.
| kerblang wrote:
| So apparently in february tesla bought 1.5 billion in bitcoin as
| part of a plan to accept payments, then announced today they
| won't accept those payments and took a nasty hit on the value of
| that bitcoin because of it.
|
| Do I just interpret this at face value as capricious decision-
| making?
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Why would they _buy_ bitcoin because they are planning to
| accept it from customers, which would increase their position?
|
| Announcing the acceptance was probably just advertising for the
| pump and dump they did.
| adoxyz wrote:
| Tesla bought BTC when it was around $36k IIRC, so even with the
| value decrease yesterday-today, they're still up significantly.
| neatze wrote:
| Probably, tesla already sold all of crypto holdings, may be
| they will buy it latter at around 36k, again.
| miked85 wrote:
| No, they sold 10% of their holdings to verify liquidity.
| [1]
|
| [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/musk-says-tesla-sold-
| bitcoin-...
| sakopov wrote:
| They also seemed to have taken some profits. Tesla's Q1
| reports a profit of $101 million from Bitcoin sales.
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| Which he stated was done to prove liquidity.
| totalZero wrote:
| It's a risky move regardless of the rationale, because a
| pump without a dump is arguably lawful.
| rchaud wrote:
| Hard to take that at face value when Tesla has
| historically struggled to make profits. If you were
| worried about liquidity, you wouldn't put that much
| capital at risk.
|
| Also, liquidity today doesn't say anything about
| liquidity in a year's time.
| cma wrote:
| Stated intention is almost meaningless.
| splithalf wrote:
| Musk likes to manipulate Tesla's value in subtle plausibly
| deniable ways. He tweets, it dips massively and then dip buying
| momentum shoots it back up higher. He's gamified tsla stock
| buying for the retail investment Reddit crowd.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that Tesla invested $1+ Billion in
| Bitcoin without doing the most basic due diligence. This isn't
| like a WSB trader burning their stimulus check. A team of
| lawyers, accountants, etc. had to be involved in this. Concern
| for energy consumption is one of the most obvious things you'd
| run across when researching Bitcoin. This definitely feels like
| something unspoken happened behind the scenes for the rapid 180.
| I'm not suggesting any crazy conspiracy theory, like I don't
| think government spooks are involved or anything like that. It
| just seems like normal corporate speak excuse for this change
| where they aren't going to really discuss what happened.
| legerdemain wrote:
| Meanwhile, Palantir announces an interest in accepting Bitcoin
| payments and investing in cryptocurrencies.[1] Leading from
| behind!
|
| [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/3-palantir-allows-payments-
| bi...
| rawtxapp wrote:
| Peter Thiel is full pro-Bitcoin.
| princeharry86 wrote:
| I think 500B or more market cap was added, when Tesla Started
| accepting Bitcoin and nobody talks about that. Media is so
| useless and biased !
| delaaxe wrote:
| You cited everything but the most important regarding this news:
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...
| (the reason for his change of mind)
| ra7 wrote:
| > the reason for his change of mind
|
| How do you know this?
| [deleted]
| xeromal wrote:
| He said it was in a tweet.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| This is the third comment in this thread where you've written
| the same quote, claiming this is what "changed his mind".
|
| Do you have any evidence of this claim?
|
| I want to keep an open mind and not jump to gaslighting
| accusations. But something about this thread doesn't sit right.
| vardump wrote:
| Shrug... did some quick Googling and found this:
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392938133163888640
|
| He might be right.
| ra7 wrote:
| So reviving old power plants was the final straw for Musk?
| If that hadn't happened, he'd continue to support Bitcoin
| even with this incredible energy usage?
|
| I don't know. It seems very convenient to list them as
| reasons now.
| vardump wrote:
| I don't know either. But he did the right thing in the
| end.
|
| Could also be some other person, like his wife or kids
| who pushed him to do this. Or other members of Tesla
| management worrying about the brand damage.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I refuse to accept someone in his position (and with his
| net worth) did not know their environmental impact _before_
| moving into cryptocurrencies.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| I'm not defending Musk, though ignorance doesn't
| necessarily diminish with growing wealth even if there
| are more opportunities to learn.
| dang wrote:
| I was simply listing the large previous HN discussions. Has
| there been one about that article? If so, link me to it and
| I'll happily add it.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27146806.
| didibus wrote:
| The word "wiped off" seems misleading, it's not like coins were
| lost or destroyed, the market value just changed based on
| demand/offer.
|
| Edit: Hum, not sure why the downvotes, is my understanding wrong?
| lvs wrote:
| Wiped off its market cap denominated in US dollars. It didn't
| lose value if you measure its value against some other crypto
| assets. Everything is relative, but it's not surprising the USD
| is the root metric considering there isn't much of any real
| economy that produces anything or pays wages in crypto. Anyway,
| these articles are generally silly.
| cjsplat wrote:
| Not sure about the down votes either, but "wiped off" is a
| common phrase for this exact sort of thing.
|
| A search for "wiped off accounting" hits a pretty large number
| of pages, including :
| https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/w...
|
| "to reduce the value of something by a large amount"
|
| The dictionary URL implies that it may be US English, but
| searching for "wiped off accounting uk" shows it is common even
| in the Queen's English.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I didn't downvote you, but your comment is the kind that gets
| downvoted.
|
| You're pointing out something that's true and besides the
| point. MSFT stock can decrease in value without any shares
| getting destroyed. The market value is in fact what people mean
| by "$X wiped off".
| didibus wrote:
| Ok, I might not have been familiar with the use of the term.
| I thought in the context of crypto, where coins can actually
| be "wiped off", in that they can be destroyed and removed
| from the available pool, it was a little confusing to me. But
| if this is a common usage to mean a sudden drop in price then
| I take it back.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| General crypto news and talk is pretty lowest common
| denominator. I agree because of pointing cryptocurrency to
| null essentially and literally wiping it out, the phrase
| isn't the best. But it's still a common enough phrase.
|
| FYI. I know virtually nothing about cryptocurrencies.
| rchaud wrote:
| Musk blaming excessive energy use for withdrawing from BTC sounds
| like a ruse, considering that he of all people absolutely knew
| that going in.
|
| I smell Teslacoin in the works. A ostensibly green
| cryptocurrency, with his face on it.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Is Tesla into Blockchain already? Because if they are, that
| would be close to peak hype BS bingo.
| delaaxe wrote:
| He changed his mind because of this:
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...
| lifty wrote:
| I noticed that you keep posting this as the definitive reason
| as to why they changed their minds. Is this confirmed or just
| conjecture?
| urda wrote:
| Please stop reposting the same comment and link all over this
| thread to push your agenda thanks.
| Siira wrote:
| You're either clueless, or an astroturf, or a troll.
| digianarchist wrote:
| I'm more cynical. It looks to me like basic manipulation of the
| market. Only possible due to 1. A lot of "dumb" money invested
| in crypto 2. Relatively small market compared to larger forex
| markets.
|
| Wouldn't surprise me if Musk sold before making the tweet and
| bought after the drop.
| rchaud wrote:
| He could have done that by continuing to tweet random meme
| nonsense and not run afoul of the SEC. Getting Tesla to pile
| in on BTC makes it a potential regulatory issue.
| aqme28 wrote:
| There's too much money in this for him not to. This is
| absolutely in his wheelhouse and MO.
| lwhi wrote:
| Will this really destroy the market?
| Animats wrote:
| The number of Tesla cars purchased with Bitcoins was probably
| tiny. It's the hype that affected the price, not the actual
| transactions.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| Buy on the dip, due to a Dip.
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